Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsDon't buy the hype. Buy something else.
Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2022
So I wanted to wait a little while before I wrote this review.....
Don't buy the hype. Buy something else, or maybe buy the Boombox 2, maybe it's better. I bought two of these and returned the first one because of issues we had out of the box. This review is for the one we kept. This thing has easily been the most aggravating and infuriating device with a plug/charger that I've ever bought.
This is an average speaker at best. I'm not an audio snob by any stretch of the imagination but I don't get all the rave reviews, especially not for the price. The sound is ok, the bass is nonexistent unless you're cranking the thing. High end dominates regardless of the source. It's just not a great speaker and definitely not for four or five hundred bucks. I got it last year on sale for 260.00 and I still feel like I paid too much.
The bass or lack thereof..... there's a feature where you can boost the bass by pressing the Vol- and Bluetooth buttons for ten seconds. Even with this feature enabled the bass was so-so at best. JBL released a firmware update to disable the feature because apparently it was causing the batteries to drain more quickly, so think twice about doing a firmware update on this thing. You can't undo it and your bass will go downhill drastically.
Connectivity...... Bluetooth was hit or miss. Couldn't get an iphone XS to connect consistently but an older iphone 6S worked perfectly. Moto G9 wouldn't connect at all. Iphone 12 worked well. Had mixed results with two different computers. I don't know if the problem was on the speaker's end or the multiple devices but what's the point of having a bluetooth speaker if you can't connect via bluetooth. It was incredibly frustrating when people would come over and want to connect with their phone to play their own music and couldn't. I have one buddy with an iphone 12 that laughs at me every time he comes over and connects with no problems when I can't get the thing to play a single song uninterrupted on my phone.
The aux connectivity was even worse. You'd think ok, if I can't get the bluetooth to work I'll use the aux to take the bluetooth out of the equation and things will play fine. Not the case. The aux input was terribly spotty - to the point I tried restarting phones, reinstalling spotify, pandora... trying different ways of playing music like itunes or youtube... disabling cell data.... disabling bluetooth. Tried different cords and nothing made a difference. And..... to make this thing even more infuriating - if you want to plug the phone in to run it off of the built in charging port while connected to the aux port you get horrible static that makes it unlistenable.
And finally just to add insult to injury.... We bought this thing in october of 2020 cause we were spending a ton of time outside. In novenber of 2021 we had a nice day and decided to take the thing outside to play some music while we were doing stuff in the yard. Pressed the power button.... nothing. Battery died a year and a month after getting it after maybe 50 hours of use with and without the bass boost enabled, on the battery instead of the adapter. Never used it in or around water either.
I honestly thought I got a lemon, but two in a row? Over the course of researching all of the issues we've had with this speaker over the year or so we've had it, I've seen tons of people complaining about all of the same issues so it's not just us. I'd steer clear of this particular product and maybe wonder why they came out with the Boombox 2 so soon after this one and maybe go with that instead or go with a speaker from another company.
